Cyberspuds
Matthew Arnison
as seen in Honi Soit, August 1993
Data highways, cyberspace, shopping from home, and ordering CDs and
films down the phone line. What mention we get of cyberspace in the
media either focuses on this gee-whiz element, or on hacking and
cyberpunk. What I think is more exciting about the new technologies in
communications and computers is the possibility of a more distributed
media.
Currently a lot of our media is created within a few large
organisations, and then fed out to the public with expensive
infrastructure which these organisations have exclusive access and
control over. But this is set to change. The vice-president of the US
has proposed the creation of an "Information Highway", a high throughput
optic fibre cable network across the States. A major US cable company
announced last week that it would be linking homes into the global
computer network known as the Internet via a couple of its cable TV
channels. In a rare flash of insight, our Federal budget just put $1m
into looking at the same sort of network for Australia. The crucial
difference with these networks is that everyone on the network has equal
rights to send stuff, as well as receive.
I'm sure that the Packers, Murdochs, Polygrams, and Panamounts of this
world will find new and better ways to deliver the same thing to more
and more people, and make lots of money out of it. And I'm sure the
public and community broadcasters will continue to do a fine job (well,
most of the time, anyway).
But what does it mean for the rest of us, if we have something we want
to say? You won't have to own the presses, have a big transmitter, or
access to a CD manufacturing plant. Which makes it easier for ordinary
people to exchange information all over the world.
Right now, I could post an article about, say, the Federal budget, on a
number of electronic networks in Australia, and many thousands of others
can read, and reply to it. Or I could participate in a discussion on
global warming with people all over the world. Or I could fetch
time-lapse satellite pictures of Africa taken over the last 24 hours,
and watch it in a little window on my screen.
If I was in a band, I could make available a 30 second grab of my latest
demo tape, for people to fetch and listen to. There's a rumour going
around that part of the reason the most recent Russian coup failed was
that although the presses, radio and TV were restricted, information
still flowed over nascent computer networks.
I can do this because I am a research student at uni, and have access to
computers hooked up to the high speed global network that is the
Internet. The whole Internet has a largely non-hierachical structure.
There are millions of people on it, and from the point of view of the
Internet, they all have equal rights to gather and post information on
it. A similar global network exists at an amateur level, called
Fidonet. All you need to access Fidonet is a computer, a phone line,
and a modem to connect the two (which cost $100 or so). Again, Fidonet
is decentralised, there are tens of thousands of small points on the
network where people can ring up, and participate. It's a pretty big
movement for something that only started about 10 years ago when a
couple of unis in the states wanted to swap files.
Will this make it into people's homes, en masse? Or will the input of
the average person be limited to their "Funniest Home Videos"?
Well, this may be another example of a new technology having a huge
impact on all our lives. I'm studying to be a scientist, and scientists
are always being told they introduce new technologies without thinking
of the social consequences (just look at Jurassic Park). So we need to
talk about these new communication technologies, we need to decide if we
need them, and if we do, how we want it to work. Otherwise, bodies like
Telecom will just make their own decisions with whatever corporate
philosophy is trendy at the time.
I think cyber could easily do to TV what TV did to radio. However, if
the new network gets set up the wrong way, we could just be in for a
generation of cyber-potatoes. If it gets set up the right way, it's
going to be an interesting decade.